Open Innovation Strategies

2History of the Evolution of Collaboration Between Actors, and Creation of Innovation Networks

2.1. Genesis of collaboration and its evolution through different innovation models

2.1.1. History of collaboration

Collaboration as a work tool or as a way of organizing actors in a given environment is not new. Through an analysis of the socio-economic foundations of collaboration within the framework of organization theory, Barondeau (2015) suggests a synthesis of the evolution of collaboration in companies. From the end of the 19th century, collaboration was established in a divided manner by targeting simplified tasks that collaborators could take on. Different activities are coordinated with each other, according to the Taylorism of the 1880s. In this model, production techniques are standardized to optimize the pace of work and achieve the best possible output, through the one best way or the best way to produce (Sandulache 2019). In the 1930s, Chester Irving Barnard proposed the concept of cooperation based on collective efficiency. He defined the formal organization as “a system of conscious coordination of activities and forces of two or more persons”. In this definition, individuals are considered as full-fledged agents who have their own interests, on the one hand, and who voluntarily cooperate, on the other hand (Bourguignon and Novicevic 2012). Furthermore, Barnard notes the essential function of cooperation in hierarchical systems by noting that “the weakest link in ...